Impact of Rahul Gandhi’s talk about escape velocity

The scientific level of political speeches has gone up tremendously since Rahul Gandhi’s talk about escape velocity. Here is an account of a recent speech by a Congress leader at a rally held in the depths of Uttar Pradesh.

An enthusiastic roar went up from the crowd as the great leader walked up to the stage. “My dear brothers and sisters,” started the neta, “dark forces powered by dark energy are trying to divide you on the basis of religion. It’s like the quantum physics you all know so well. They will tell you that some of you are quarks, some are leptons and some are gluons. But do you fall for this unscientific attempt to separate brother from brother? Not at all, for you are all one, united. Because string theory tells us that leptons, gluons, quarks are all, at bottom, strings. And if your fundamental particles are all strings, surely you too are nothing but harmoniously vibrating strings?” Here he paused and an appreciative chant was heard from the crowd, “United we stand, united we cling/ Proud to be little pieces of string.” But not all were enthused and some looked dubiously at their pyjama strings. An aam aadmi wanted to know whether they would get free strings.

“The opposition,” continued the great man, “has no momentum. What is momentum?” he shouted. “Mass times velocity,” shouted back a scientific supporter. “Absolutely,” said the leader, “While they may have velocity, the mass is with us.” The crowd started reciting, “Everybody knows the famous rectum/The Congress party has momentum.” “Not rectum, dictum”, shouted the leader, but nobody paid any attention. “Moreover, the opposition is afflicted by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle,” said the dear leader. Somebody wanted to know whether Heisenberg’s surname was Yadav.

“I want to tell the Samajwadi Party,” thundered the honourable leader, “its days are numbered.” He was rudely interrupted by a heckler. “What kind of numbers,” shouted the heckler “odd, prime, ordinal, integers, imaginary or quadratic surds?” As the protestor was sat upon, the leader said the thing about Samajwadi party supporters was that they all deviated from normal behaviour. “It’s a new statistical discovery I have dubbed a Samajwadi standard deviation,” he smirked.

“Do you all know Einstein’s famous equation E=mc2?” asked the great leader. As the masses answered they did, he continued, “Then you will know it means Elections=Mostly Congress2. The BJP thinks it is riding a wave, but Einstein’s wave-particle duality shows a wave may very well be a particle.” That was the signal for the erudite chant, “E equals mc squared/The BJP will not be spared.” A great shout of “Steinji zindabad”, rent the air. A pedant’s protest about the name being Einstein was completely ignored.

“And finally, talking of Mayawati,” said the leader, “she’s a completely irrational number, like pi.” That was the cue for the crowd to shout, “3.14159/The BSP has no spine.”

Resumed the leader, “The Congress, on the other hand, is like the Higgs boson, it’s been there right from the Big Bang.” As a roar of “Mahatma Higgs Boson amar rahe” came from the crowd, the great leader vowed to flush the combined opposition down a black hole.

Manas Chakravarty is Consulting Editor, Mint Views expressed by the author are personal